Green warriors:
Laura Cornell's Green Yoga Association blends yoga and ecology

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, KYTA member Laura Cornell showed her yoga students pictures of the Hindu goddess Kali and the class meditated together on the forces of destruction and compassion.

To bring awareness to the plight of California's oaks and redwoods, which are threatened by a plant disease called sudden oak death, Laura and her students sent love and blessings to the trees as the class practiced Tree pose.

"Yoga teachers have the opportunity to bring some light into this area of darkness and fear," says Laura, who founded the Green Yoga Association in Emeryville, California in 2004. "We need to find ways for our yoga to help reconnect us to this planet. In the United States, we have taken so strongly to this practice of yoga, but at the same time we haven't yet looked at how yoga helps us take care of the earth, how it can give us strength to take on the unprecedented challenges we face."

The Association—which last fall hosted its first Green Yoga conference, attended by 135 yoga practitioners and activists—?grew out of Laura's research for her doctoral dissertation on yoga and ecology, which she designed as a collaborative project with five other Kripalu Yoga teachers: Hasita Agathe Nadai, Ben Lord, Tanuja Daniel, Leanne Ovalles, and Bob Bruce. Through study, discussion, self-observation, and sharing, they explored ways to incorporate ecological awareness into their practice and teaching.

"We looked at how we could be a source of compassion and healing for the planet, and how we could release our self-judgment in terms of our actions on the earth, but at the same time have the courage to take new steps to love the earth," Laura says.

Historically, ecology has played a vital role in the yogic tradition. In Vedic times, Laura explained, the whole cosmos was seen as the body of God or the Goddess, with the different species of animals and plants reflecting the different aspects of divinity; practicing a posture named after a plant or animal was a way of embodying its soul quality. The concept of ahimsa, nonviolence, grew from a deep reverence for the universe and all it contained.

With conferences, a newsletter, a powerful values statement, and a website that has received more than 30,000 visitors, the Green Yoga Association aims to rekindle that sense of reverence. Through its Green Studios Pilot Program, yoga teachers at studios around the country are helping to develop ecological guidelines and resources for yoga teachers, covering everything from infrastructure to programming.

Laura believes it's no coincidence that the Green Yoga Association was launched by Kripalu Yoga teachers. "There's a great respect within Kripalu's lineage for the inner wisdom of the practitioner," she says. "The idea of listening within and following your inner guidance can be expanded to include a conscious attunement to prana in the external environment as well."

To learn more about the Green Yoga Association and its Green Studios Pilot Program, visit www.greenyoga.org.